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# Staying Together Damaged Me
- URL: https://dd.malinoix.com/staying-together-damaged-me/
- Published: 2013-05-08T06:00:28.000Z
- Updated: 2013-05-08T06:00:28.000Z
- Author: Maggie Winterton
- Tags: Relationships, Anxiety/Depression, Church, Divorce, Forgiveness, Guest Blogger, Love, Marriage, Motherhood, Relationships, Singleness, Story, #wordpress, #Import 2026-10-12 13:59

![staying together damaged me](https://dd.malinoix.com/content/images/wordpress/2013/05/staying-together-damaged-me-545x362.jpg)

\[Guest Post by Anonymous – Today’s guest wishes to remain anonymous to protect the identity of her family. If you know of anyone who is suffering in silence in a marriage that is both damaging and abusive, please encourage them that they are not alone–and it’s okay to get help!\]

### Living together damaged me.

I can hear the traditionalists cheering and saying “Finally!” Hold those cheers ones of traditional leanings…you may not like what I have coming.

I have a history of doing the “right” thing. In high school I didn’t drink because I played sports, and the legal age for drinking was 21, not 15, 16, or 17.

### I stayed *pure* because I wanted to save myself for my husband.

And really, even in college, I deemed no boyfriend worthy of all this fleshly goodness–and then I met my future husband, who also wanted to do the right thing.

But.

### It’s so hard being in your 20’s and not giving in to the wonders of the flesh.

Since I knew I was going to marry him–well, I’d saved myself long enough–I jumped in. We married a few months later and I really believed life would be my fairy tale–until I found myself divorced 17 years later.

*Living together damaged me.*

*Staying together damaged me.*

### I previously said I had a history of doing the right thing.

*I followed rules.* 

*I ate right.* 

*I took care of my physical body.* 

I made my husband breakfast every morning, and lunch, and dinner. I had sex with him even though exhaustion ravaged my body. I paid the bills, then when he deemed I couldn’t handle finances, I let him take over to the point of freezing me out of bank accounts. After all, that is what *good* wives did.

### The *right* thing to do is to follow your husband’s lead.

I took care of the kids night and day. I got them to school or schooled them myself. I got a job—to *help* out the family. I served, or over-served, in my church. I spoke my husband up, even though I lived with a massive secret. I did all this because it was the *right* thing–the wifely thing to do.

### And my sense of worth suffered.

I worked harder in ministry because I didn’t quite have it right. I cleaned the house every day because it needed to be just right. I kept all forms of kid fighting off the radar when daddy got home, because that was the right thing to do. I kept our fights, my bruises, the insults and harsh words a secret—all in the name of the *right* thing to do.

### And then I cracked.

*I suffered.* 

*I cried.* 

*I screamed.* 

*I fell apart.* 

I started throwing over the counter migraine medicine down my throat because all the *right* things had caught up to me and I realized how *wrong* I had been.

### For years and years I stayed in an unhealthy situation, because I thought it was the *right* thing to do.

For years and years I cultivated a marriage, I lived together, in a situation where sin abounded and so many, many people got caught in its crossfire. For years and years I let unhealthy people walk all over me, believing it was the *right* thing to do.

*And all the while, staying together was damaging me.*

### I grieve over the loss of my marriage.

 *I grieve over the loss of family.* 

*I hate divorce, even though I am divorced.* 

But I celebrate in the broken pieces being renewed. I celebrate healthy living—not in the physical form, but in the mental, emotional and spiritual form. And I have come to this conclusion:

Sometimes, living together in the covenant of marriage can damage you, but living together outside the covenant of marriage will always leave its imperfect mark on the relationship.

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